Topic: Pacing and well-earned rest

Also investments.

So, the good book says that any investment will be resolved in a year and that managing your property and hirelings happens on a month-to-month basis.

This seems to suggest that playing a campaign out day by day or even week by week is not going to be very satisfying for anyone involved since the players would get to engage with these financial systems very rarely. Adventures and other exciting stuff are a thing of their own, of course, but should there be a substantial amount of fast-forwarded time between those adventures?

A week between adventures (sessions)? A month? A year? How fast does the time fly by in your games and how often do your players get to fiddle with investments and property management?

Re: Pacing and well-earned rest

After my session today, I have started thinking about property.

Purchasing property seems very expensive... my players are working through Better Than Any Man. They began with new characters at 1st level, and while they will probably reach 2nd level in the near future, they will not have nearly enough money to purchase property.

It seems like players will need to reach around 7th level before they will have enough money to purchase property, and that assumes they have saved much of their treasure for purchasing property.

I envision the pacing of my campaign being drawn out... after my group is done with Better Than Any Man, we will play a few other RPGs, then pick up our LotFP game again after several months.

In game, I would like to "fast-forward" a couple months to a point where they are ready to embark upon another adventure. That seems like a reasonable way of pacing the game to me: mundane expenses drive the players to set out on additional adventures for treasure (because who wants to do real work).

Paying retainers would drain resources, as would monthly rent expenses. At some point, further into the future of the campaign, they might be able to purchase property, build libraries/laboratories, and make investments. But I don't see that happening until at least 5th level, unless I drop them a huge treasure hoard (or I have my numbers wrong).

Last edited by CironeAE (2014-02-03 05:17:59)

Re: Pacing and well-earned rest

Also fast-forwarding game brings other troubles, like aging. Normally you would play your character until he horribly dies but when he ages between adventures, there's another problem. The time.

I think that fast-forwarding could be explained well. After surviving one LotFP adventure as a character are you mentally able to throw yourself in another adventure in the next day? Hell no! You need time or you go nuts. Also treating wounds can take time and for Magic-Users all the fiddly magic thing takes much time.

Also characters might have real life things going on in background. You don't have to play these things in detail, but it's an excuse for fast-forwarding. While M-U spends few months researching the Cleric devotes the time to worship his god in a monastery. Fighter drinks and fights and releases some steam and war trauma. Dwarf visits his family in the mountains. Halfling goes meet his sick auntgranny etc.

And also distance equals time. I bet there are no places like in LotFP around one days -or weeks- travel. So you might literally have to spend months travelling from dungeon of horrible death no. 1 to dungeons of horrible death no. 2.

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